


Twenty Dollar Limit

by Pigzxo



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5510306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam tells Ronan he can only spend $20 on his Christmas present. (AKA a case study in what Ronan thinks costs twenty dollars)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Dollar Limit

“Twenty dollars?” Ronan said. He stared at Adam, disbelieving, and repeated the words. “Twenty dollars?”

            Adam sighed. He sat on his bed in his church apartment and ran a hand across his face. Ronan had to admit that he looked good. Dead tired from getting home from his third job, hair a mess, and smelling of gasoline. All Ronan really wanted to do was press him down against his mattress and kiss him until he woke up a little bit. But he was kind of stuck on the whole twenty dollar thing.

            “What the fuck am I supposed to buy you for twenty dollars?”

            “Believe it or not,” Adam said, his blue eyes meeting Ronan’s without any hint of amusement. “There are Secret Santas that go on all across the world with _ten_ dollar limits.”

            “Yeah. Because Secret Santa is for people who hate each other and are forced to get each other presents. Not for boyfriends.”

            Adam licked his lips. God, Ronan wished this argument could be over so he could kiss him. “That’s all I want you to spend on me, okay? I don’t want your charity and I don’t want you spending three hundred dollars on a watch and I don’t want you to give me something I could never dream of giving you, okay? So twenty dollars. That’s the limit.”

            Ronan let out a dramatic sigh. “Twenty fucking dollars.” He kicked at a pair of jeans on Adam’s floor. “What the fuck can you buy for twenty dollars? A pack of gum?”

            “Five packs of gum.”

            Ronan blinked.

            “A pack of gum is about three bucks,” Adam said. He stared at his fingers, tried to pry the dirt out from under his nails. “So if you bought five of them it’d be eighteen dollars, which you can round to twenty.”

            “Okay...” Ronan said, shaking his head. “Food for a week?”

            “A hundred dollars.”

            “Then what?”

            Adam looked up at him, blue eyes bored, but with the edge of a smile on his lips. It was like he was _trying_ to get Ronan hot while they were arguing. Ronan hated him. Right there and then, he decided that he hated him and he would spend five cents on his present and get him... penny candy. Whatever the hell that was.

            “You can think of nothing, absolutely nothing, to buy that would fit between gum and food for a week?” Adam asked.

            The challenge was clear, so Ronan turned his head towards the ceiling and prayed to God that here, behind His house, He could tell him something that cost twenty dollars. God was silent. Of course He was. He couldn’t have been happy that they were doing all sorts of nasty things to each other so close to His house.

            With a sigh, Ronan looked back at Adam. “A book?”

            “Twenty-two if we’re talking hardcover, ten if you mean a paperback.”

            Ronan took a step closer to the bed and looked down at Adam. “Can we be done with this fight now?”

            “You stared it.”

            “You’re the one who came home, took off your coat, and immediately declared that I wasn’t allowed to spend more than twenty dollars on your Christmas present,” Ronan said. He nudged Adam’s knees apart and stepped between his legs. “So who really started it?”

            “You.”

            Ronan ran his thumbs down Adam’s jaw. He leaned in, close enough to kiss him, and said, “Agree to disagree.”

            Right before their lips touched, Adam pulled back. Serious, he looked up at Ronan and said, “Twenty dollar limit. Non-negotiable. Okay?”

            “Okay,” Ronan agreed. And then he finally got to kiss him.

 

“What the fuck can someone buy for twenty dollars?” Ronan asked. He had flopped down on Gansey’s bed in the middle of Monmouth. Gansey barely looked up from his desk, elbow deep in a giant textbook despite it being the middle of the night. “Does anything actually cost that much money?”

            “Twenty dollars?” Gansey said.

            Ronan rolled his eyes and sat up, facing Gansey. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation.”

            “It sounds like you’re complaining about not having a twenty dollar bill.”

            “Have you ever even had a twenty dollar bill? Who the hell is on the twenty dollar bill?”

            “Andrew Jackson,” Gansey replied absently. He flipped a page in his book.

            “Of course you know that.” Ronan chewed on the straps at his wrist, tasted hot leather in his mouth. It got rid of the taste of Adam now, but he still did it every time he thought of him, an immediate reaction. “But what can you buy with twenty dollars?”

            Gansey finally looked up. “What are we talking about?”

            “Adam put a twenty dollar limit on his Christmas present.”

            Gansey blinked, his hazel eyes dead and tired. The page balanced on his finger trembled, slipped, and fell back into place. “And?”

            “What do I buy him?”

            “Plenty of things cost twenty dollars,” Blue said. She stepped out of the bathroom and turned off the light. “Just go to the mall and check some price tags.”

            Ronan gave Blue a look. “Gansey. You didn’t tell me she was here.”

            “I barely knew you were here,” Gansey replied.

            Blue whacked him on the back of the head and sat down beside Ronan on the bed. Then she rolled back, landed her head on the pillow, and stretched out on the mattress behind him. “What did you want to get him?”

            Ronan stared at Gansey, who had gone back to his book. Then he glanced over at Blue and she looked back at him with a piercing gaze, didn’t blink. Ronan said, “I wanted to get him a laptop.”

            Blue stared at him for a long moment and then let out a short, sharp laugh. The smile it elicited stayed on her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Have you met Adam? You had to know he would’ve killed you for that.”

            “He might have been _annoyed_ , but—”

            “No, he would’ve killed you,” Gansey said.

            Ronan glared at him. “You two are a really annoying couple, you know that?”

            Gansey offered him a weak smile before he went back to his book. Blue stuck her tongue out at him.

            “There has to be something else you thought of,” Blue said.

            “Sure,” Ronan agreed. “A watch, a new car, nice clothes, rent for the rest of the year, his fucking tuition, I could pay his college application fees if he let me. I thought at least with a laptop he couldn’t deny that he fucking needed one.”

            “It’s twenty dollars, not a death sentence,” she said. “We’ll go shopping tomorrow.”

            “Shopping,” Ronan repeated. “She wants to go shopping, Gansey.”

            “Sounds good.”

            “You’re not even listening. You’re reading... what? A book on where Atlantis can be found?”

            Gansey sighed and picked the book up off of the table. “I’m reading nothing. It’s in Latin.” He offered the book and Ronan took it from him.

            Ronan skimmed a couple of lines, frowned, and said, “I’m going to need a pen.”

            Gansey walked around the desk to hand him a pen and sat down next to him. They fell into discussion about the text and soon Blue was asleep behind them. Ronan said, “You really think I can buy a decent gift for twenty dollars?”

            Gansey smiled. “Of course.” And then he went back to the text and Ronan threw himself into translating to ignore the nausea turning his stomach.

 

Ronan stood near the cash register of a kitschy knick knack store and flicked key chains with his middle finger.  The sound of the metal tapped together, like aluminum cans in a recycling bin, almost drowned out the noise of Blue picking out the most hideous things in the store and attempting to get Ronan to buy them.

            “Are you even trying?” she snapped.

            Ronan looked back at her. “In here? No.”

            “It’s cheap.”

            “It’s trash.”

            Blue sighed. She looked over her shoulder to where Gansey played with poetry magnets on a magnetic chalkboard. “You’re sure he doesn’t want anything for his apartment?” she said. “It’s pretty bare. He might want some magnets or an air freshener or...” She trailed off as Ronan stared at her and then let out a dramatic sigh. “Fine. Let’s go. Gansey!”

            The three of them exited the store and met the pulse of Christmas shoppers around them. There was still a solid week to go but the people in the mall ran around like the world was ending tomorrow so Christmas had been moved up by popular demand. Ronan grumbled, “Still don’t know why I couldn’t have ordered something online.”

            “Shipping,” Blue said.

            “You think he gives a fuck about the cost of shipping?”

            “Have you met Adam?”

            Ronan was starting to get really fucking pissed over the implication that he didn’t know his boyfriend at all. He could think of a hundred things to buy Adam. A thousand. Problem was, he either had no fucking clue how much they cost or knew enough to know they surpassed a twenty dollar limit. He was starting to think that settling for a twenty dollar gift certificate might be his best bet at not fucking up Adam’s rules.

            Gansey dragged them into a bookstore and started showing Ronan random books that he had no interest in. When Gansey insisted that Adam would probably be interested, Ronan said, “I’m looking for something that will get me laid, not ignored.” which ended any discussion of getting Adam a book for Christmas.

            They went in and out of several more stores with little discussion. Gansey suggested Ronan by Adam a nice shirt, a new tie, a pair of socks. Ronan reiterated the goal was for Adam to have _less_ clothes on. Blue suggested wind chimes, a dream catcher, a deck of cards. Ronan asked if she thought Adam’s last name was Sargent. The two of them as a team picked out cuff links, nice hair products, a tool box. Ronan said he’d rather kill himself, a joke Gansey didn’t take well.

            In their third hour of shopping, Ronan slowed outside a lingerie store and said, “For fuck’s sake, why couldn’t I be straight.”

            “Lingerie costs more than twenty bucks,” Gansey said.

            “Excuse me?” Blue said.

            Gansey looked at her, hazel eyes innocent. “It’s common knowledge, isn’t it? The average bra is fifty dollars, if you want to get a fancy one then— What? Isn’t feminism about equality and isn’t part of that men being able to know things about women and possible financial struggles related to their... womanhood?”

            “Womanhood,” Blue repeated, deadpan.

            “If you’re going to break up, could you do it later?” Ronan asked. “Or over fries? I’m fucking starving.” He started towards the food court, not really caring if his friends followed. His feet ached from walking all day, his eyes were drooping, and quite frankly he no longer gave a rat’s ass whether or not Adam gave him a twenty dollar limit. Adam could take his twenty dollar limit and shove it up his ass for all Ronan cared. He might as well get him nothing and say, _I thought you’d be happy that I didn’t spend any money on you._

            Adam was his boyfriend, not his charity case, and Ronan would damn well spoil him. If only Adam would let him.

            Ronan was overly rude to the lady serving frozen yogurt and was ninety percent sure she spat in it. He left his change in the tip jar anyways and settled back against the top of a small, round table. “What if I buy him something that costs a hundred dollars and only let him use it twenty percent of the time?” Ronan said.

            “That might be worse,” Gansey said. Blue just stared while she licked pineapple yogurt from her spoon.

            “I’m just going to buy the next thing I see that’s twenty dollars and that’ll be it.”

            “The next thing you see?” Gansey said.

            “Yes.”

            “Okay.”

            “Ronan, you don’t want to do that,” Blue said.

            “I really fucking do,” he said. He hopped up off of the table, spoon in his mouth, and headed down a hallway at random. Staring into windows, he looked for visible price tags that said $19.99. Absently he wondered if Adam counted taxes in his ridiculous price limit.

            Then he saw it.

            “There we go. Twenty dollars. Let’s wrap it up,” Ronan said, pointing.

            Blue said, “You can’t.”

            Ronan turned and stepped into the store backwards. His hands raised in surrender, he said, “Twenty dollars. First thing I saw. Fair game. Right, Gansey?”

            Gansey stared at him, his mouth open, a chunk of frozen yogurt between his back teeth. “He’ll kill you,” he said, then shrugged. “Fair game.”

            With a laugh, Ronan turned and headed into the store.

 

Ronan spent most of the afternoon making sure that Gansey would be out of the house at four o’clock. A repetitive question made necessary by Gansey’s research and his inability to ever look at a fucking clock. Other than reminding Gansey, Ronan fed Chainsaw, blasted his music, and double checked that his presents were wrapped correctly and he knew which one was which.

            Then four o’clock rolled around, Gansey was gone, and there was a knock at Monmouth’s door. Ronan picked up the red and green wrapped present from the top of his stack and stepped out into the main room, closing his door behind him.

            Adam had already walked in, his hands in his pockets. He smiled when he met Ronan’s eyes. “You managed to meet a twenty dollar limit?”

            Ronan smirked and held out the present. The edge of the rectangular box tapped Adam’s chest and left little room between them. “Easy,” he said.

            “Really?” Adam asked. “Blue said you were in the mall for four hours.”

            “Complaining,” Ronan said with a shrug. His eyes sparkled as he tapped the top of the present. “Open it.”

            Adam looked up at him with a hint of a smile and more nervousness than Ronan thought was completely necessary. Of course, his present would probably confirm Adam’s instinct to be nervous, but that was beside the point.

            Adam ripped into the wrapping paper and looked down at the box. The smile fell from his face and he said, “Ronan...” Blue eyes looked up, unamused as Ronan smirked at him. “This is a dildo.”

            “Cost twenty dollars,” Ronan replied.

            With a single blink, Adam’s lips became even thinner. His eyes shifted back to the box in his hand, his defeat obvious in his shoulders. Ronan could tell he was gearing up to say something or to sigh or maybe just to break up with him in general.

            “Hey,” Ronan said. “It was a joke. Lighten up a bit.”

            Adam faked a smile and dropped the box onto Gansey’s desk. Ronan bit back a smirk, made a mental note not to move the box and to make sure he was here when Gansey came back. Adam said, “All right. What’d you really get then?”

            Ronan took a step back, beckoned Adam to follow him. He pushed backwards through the door to his room, sat down on his bed, and handed Adam the second present. Adam hesitated with his nails against the green Christmas tree paper and met Ronan’s eyes. “Still twenty dollars?” he asked.

            “I dreamed it,” Ronan replied.

            “That might be cheating.”

            “Just open it.” He waited, his eyes on Adam’s hand, nausea in the pit of his stomach. His first joke hadn’t gone well and he was starting to regret this one too. He nearly snatched the gift out of Adam’s hand, but Adam already had a strip of paper gone, revealing the plain white box. Adam popped the lid off the box, gave the contents a glance, and then threw the box onto the bed, chain clinking.

            “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Adam said.

            “Adam—”

            “What? It was a joke?” Adam said. His blue eyes were wide, wet with tears that wouldn’t roll down his cheeks. “Is everything just a fucking joke to you, Ronan?”

            “Take a breath,” Ronan said, too sharp. He bit his bottom lip hard, tried to get his heartbeat back under control. “I have a real present, okay?”

            Adam stared at him. “And it cost twenty dollars?”

            “No.”

            “You dreamed it?”

            “No.” Ronan’s heart stopped.

            Adam sighed. “Ronan, I said a twenty dollar limit—”

            “And I told you that was ridiculous.”

            A ragged breath left Adam. His lips were all but invisible against his tan skin and his hands were curled into fists to stop them from shaking. “This isn’t a fucking joke to me, okay? You can go ahead and make jokes and buy me ten presents to make your point that twenty dollars is a stupid limit but I can’t, okay? It’s not a joke.”

            “Adam, I know—”

            “You don’t know anything,” Adam snapped. Taking a deep breath, he ran a hand over his mouth. His voice calmed, he continued, “You wanna know why I put a twenty dollar limit on what you could give me, Ronan? Because I couldn’t afford anything else. Twenty dollars is all I had to spend on you so I didn’t want you spending a hundred dollars on me and making me feel like shit for it. I thought maybe... maybe something worth twenty dollars could be worth a damn to you. But obviously it can’t.”

            “Adam—”

            “Just don’t,” Adam said. He swallowed hard and took a step towards the door. “I need to go.”

            Ronan stared at him, watched him turn away. It took him a second to peel away from the bed and step out into the main room. “Adam,” he said. “What the fuck? It was a joke. I’m sorry. Would you just—”         

            “I need you to leave me alone,” Adam said. He was already at the door, his eyes fire bright. The first tear had hit his cheek, dripped down his chin. Ronan felt his heart drop into his shoes. “Can’t you even fucking do that right?”

            The door slammed.

 

“I fucked up,” Ronan said the moment Gansey walked through the door. And something about his voice, maybe the way it cracked on the second word, made Gansey close the book he had in his hands.

            “We did tell you it’d be a bad idea,” Gansey said. He set the book down on the desk, glanced absently at the dildo, then sat down beside Ronan on his bed. He patted his back, rubbed smooth circles down his spine.

            “Yeah, but,” Ronan paused to take a breath. “A bad idea like he’d be kinda annoyed. Not a bad idea like he’d storm out of here crying and now no one at the fucking church can get him on the phone and... I think he might be done with me.”

            Gansey bit his bottom lip, his hand slowing. “He’s not done with you.”

            Ronan forced a laugh. “You don’t even believe that.”

            “I’m going to call Blue.”

            “Yes, by all means, call your girlfriend right now,” Ronan snapped. “Not like I need you or anything.”

            “I’m going to call Blue and she’s going to spend ten minutes saying I told you so and five minutes calling you an idiot and then she’s going to tell you how to fix this,” Gansey said.

            Ronan gave him a look. “Does it bother you at all that your girlfriend helps me fix problems with my boyfriend who is your girlfriend’s ex?”

            “No,” he replied. He took out his phone and dialed Blue’s number, put it on speakerphone. The two of them listened through the rings, the scramble to get Blue to the phone, and then waited for Blue to stop insulting Ronan. Gansey said, “Can you fix this?”

            Blue took a deep breath over the line. “You’ve gotta prove to him that there’s something that costs twenty dollars that you find worthwhile. You need to give him a real present in his price limit.”

            “I tried.”

            “You gave up,” Blue said. “You didn’t try. You need to try this time.”

            Ronan licked his lips. “I don’t think that’s gonna be enough.”

            “Think of something good,” she said. “Something that’ll mean something to him, that means something to you.”

            The line was silent for a long moment. Ronan chewed on the leather straps at his wrist, stretched them between his teeth. He forced his breath to come out even and then muttered, “I don’t think there’s anything.”

            Gansey said, “You can draw.”

            “Great. So I’ll draw him a Christmas tree and a Santa hat like some frickin’ third grader...” Ronan couldn’t find the bite to finish the sentence right. The straps had fallen from his mouth, wet against his chin. They tasted nothing like Adam. Adam tasted like gasoline and honey and dry skin, not leather.

            After a moment of silence, Blue said, “I think he’d like that. If you drew something nice. Not a crayon Christmas tree.”

            “For twenty dollars?” Ronan said. “My sketchbook was fifteen, the pencils are ten, sharpie’s, what... three? And then good pencil crayons are... twelve, I think.”

            “You’re not giving him all of that, so it should be fine,” Blue said. “But if you want to calculate the exact fraction of everything you use to make sure it’s under twenty dollars, I’m sure no one would be interested.”

            “Do you really have to be a bitch right now?” Ronan asked. Blue started in on a rant about the word “bitch” and Ronan hung up on her. He took a deep breath and glanced towards Gansey. “Guess I should get started.”

            Gansey’s phone rang again, Blue’s name showing up. “Good idea,” Gansey said. He answered the phone, winced at the sound of Blue’s anger, and started to calm her down. Ronan watched him talk for a moment before he got up, his body tired, and headed to his room to draw a fucking picture for a Christmas present.

 

Ronan shook in front of Adam’s door. Behind it, the sound of pages turning and Adam breathing were soft. It’d been three days since Ronan had seen Adam and now he stood, his fingers curled around the edge of his present, nearly ripping the paper, afraid to knock on the door. His heart was hollow in his chest, beating out air instead of blood.

            He knocked, closed his eyes and waited. The pages stopped, the sound of the bed creaking filled the air, and soft footsteps sounded on old floorboards. Door opening, Ronan blinked open his eyes, his knuckles white around his present. Adam’s blue eyes stared back at him, tired and resistant. They flickered down to the present in Ronan’s hand.

            “Give me another chance?” Ronan asked.

            Adam continued to stare at the badly done wrapping job, candy cane paper askew, ripped under Ronan’s fingernails. Silently, he stepped back from the door and Ronan walked in, laid the present on Adam’s bed.

            “The frame was five dollars,” Ronan said. “Paper’s about ten cents a sheet. I don’t know how to calculate the amount of a pencil I used but... I’m pretty sure it was under twenty dollars, all in all.” He bit his lip as he looked over at Adam, whose focus was still the present. “Open it?”

            Adam stepped towards the bed, his knees indenting the mattress. He ripped open the wrapping paper and pulled out the framed picture Ronan had drawn of the two of them standing together, Santa hats on, drinking hot chocolate. Adam said nothing, just stared.

            “There’s a line there I couldn’t quite erase and I couldn’t get the curve of your shoulders quite right and I know the colouring’s kinda off but...” His voice faded as he stared at the side of his boyfriend’s face. “It’s pretty bad.” He bit on his leather straps.

            Slowly, Adam shook his head. His fingers trembled at the edge of the frame and he set it down. Looking at Ronan, his blue eyes were bright and the smile on his lips, while weak, was genuine. “It’s perfect,” he said.

            Ronan let out the breath he’d been holding. “Adam...” He swallowed his own words, unsure where to begin. “I didn’t think anything that cost twenty dollars would be worth much to you.”

            “Ronan, twenty dollars is quite a bit of money to me.”

            “I know, just...” He took a deep breath. “You have twenty dollars. Anything that costs twenty dollars you can buy yourself and if you can buy it yourself then... I don’t know what use it is to get it from me. I don’t know why you’d want it from me.”

            Adam stared at him, blue eyes wide. “I’m not with you because of your money.”

            “Yeah, but I can’t really think of any other reason why you would be.”

            Adam’s smile widened slightly, tears in his eyes. He pecked Ronan on the lips, quick, his hand on Ronan’s elbow. “I can think of a hundred reasons.”

            “Mmm,” Ronan said. He rested his forehead against Adam’s, breathed in the scent of sweat and gasoline. “You wanna list them?”

            A small laugh escaped Adam and he pulled away. “How about I give you your present instead?” He turned to his bedside table, opened the drawer, and picked up a small box. He handed it to Ronan, slight colour to his cheeks, and looked down at his feet.

            Ronan ripped into the small package. New brown leather straps sat in a pool of red tissue paper. Adam said, “I thought... well, you know. The ones you have now are kind of coming apart and are all chewed and maybe... I can get something else.”

            Ronan pulled Adam close and kissed him. “Tell you what,” he said, voice husky. “How about you wear these for a while?” He pulled them from the box and slipped them over Adam’s hand. “And you can chew on them and I’ll chew on these ones and in a couple weeks we’ll switch.”

            Adam laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

            “I want them to taste like you,” he said. Adam’s smile was breathless, but he said nothing. He let Ronan kiss him again, slowly. Then he pulled back to ask, “You’re still coming to Christmas at my house? Church first, then the Barns... I promise we’ll be on our best behaviour.”

            “Which means you and Declan will be passive-aggressive instead of just plain aggressive?”

            Ronan smiled, kissed him. “Pretty much.”

            “Yeah, I’ll come,” Adam mumbled between kisses. He laughed and their teeth crashed together as Ronan pushed him back onto the bed, careful to avoid the picture frame. “Our first Christmas together.”

            “And not our last,” Ronan said.

            “Came close,” Adam joked and, before Ronan could get mad at him for that, he kissed him again deeply enough to shut him up.


End file.
